Deputy Director, Center for Innovation in Global Health & Program Director, Blantyre Prevention Strategy
Sara M. Allinder is Deputy Director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Georgetown University and Program Director of the Blantyre Prevention Strategy (BPS) – an innovative project implemented in partnership with the Government of Malawi that has created an adaptable model for HIV prevention sub-national systems. She also is a co-investigator for Malawi’s PathtoScale Injectable PrEP implementation science study and provides technical and management support to the implementation of PathToScale, the Post-Injectable Cabotegravir Antiretroviral Salvage Strategy Options (PICASSO) Trial, and Sustainable Prevention Initiative.
In addition, Ms. Allinder serves on the Product Access Advisory Committee (PAAC) for the MOSAIC project to accelerate introduction and scale-up of new and emerging biomedical prevention products funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She also is an expert advisor to Pharos Global Health Advisors and authored country case studies on Malawi and Haiti included in a 2022 evaluation conducted for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GF) focused on the 2020 cohort of COVID-19 Response Mechanism (C19RM) grants and a 2021 thematic review of GF’s role in pandemic preparedness and response (PPR).
Ms. Allinder has extensive experience in global health, foreign policy, international development, human rights, and program management. Previously, she was a Senior Fellow and Executive Director of the Global Health Policy Center (GHPC) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from 2016-2020. In addition to leading GHPC’s work on HIV, Ms. Allinder supported activities on nutrition, other infectious diseases, global health security, and women’s and family health, and was a frequent host of its Take as Directed and AIDS 2020 podcasts. She is a CSIS Senior Associate (non-resident) and was a 2023 CSIS Global Women’s Leadership Program fellow.
Prior to joining CSIS, Ms. Allinder spent more than a decade working on PEPFAR in Washington, DC, and in Uganda where she served as Country Coordinator of the $353 million PEPFAR program (2013-15). In four stints at the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy, U.S. Department of State (2003-16), Ms. Allinder was a senior advisor on PEPFAR management, operations, and policy issues. In earlier roles at the U.S. Department of State, Ms. Allinder was policy adviser in the Office of International Health Affairs, where she led the policy response to the SARS and Avian Flu outbreaks, and served as senior editor for Africa of the human rights and international religious freedom reports in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF).
Ms. Allinder holds a Master of Public Policy, concentration in International Development and Health, and a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Political Science and Sociology, both from The American University, Washington, DC. She is currently a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Could a Systems Approach be the Disruptor Needed in HIV Prevention?
December 1st, 2020
Business as usual is not working in HIV prevention. The latest UNAIDS data from 2019 demonstrates that we are collectively failing to bring down the number of new infections globally. Despite…
